A Shade of Difference (2 page)

“You’ll learn if you stay awhile,” Senator Fry said. “Do you know Terrible—His Royal Highness the M’Bulu of Mbuele?”

“My pleasure,” Orrin Knox said. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for some time, Your Highness.”

“Call him Terry,” Hal Fry said. “Everybody does. Orrin, do you have any instructions for me for Fifth Committee?”

“No different than you’ve had right along,” the Secretary said, “but come over here. Excuse us, gentlemen.”

Staring out the great window at the gleaming river, outwardly placid, actually swift-racing in the autumn light, he asked abruptly: “How are you feeling?”

“I’m all right,” Hal Fry said with some surprise. “I’m feeling fine. Why?”

“You looked quite odd for a minute last night at the Guinean reception,” Orrin said. “A very strange expression. I didn’t know whether you were going to faint or what.”

“Was it that obvious?” Senator Fry asked in some annoyance.

“I don’t think anybody saw it but me. What was it?”

“Just my eyes,” Hal Fry said. “A little reddish tinge for a minute. It went right away. Just overtired, I think. It startled me, though, which is why I showed it, I guess.”

“Well, take it easy,” Orrin Knox said. “That’s orders.”

“You’re very thoughtful. I will, as much as one can around this place.”

“I don’t want the acting chief delegate dropping by the wayside now that the permanent Ambassador is incapacitated too.”

“How’s he doing?”

“So-so. I was by Harkness Pavilion this morning. Still oxygen tent.”

“Hearts are occupational in the public business, I guess,” Senator Fry said with a sigh. “How’s yours?”

“I’m too ornery to die,” Orrin Knox said, turning back to the others. “Everybody knows that. Well, gentlemen, I expect the committees are beginning, and we should probably all run along. Take care of the interests of the United States in Fifth Committee, K.K. I know we can count on you.”

“M. Raoul Barre, s’il vous plait,”
the young lady said politely to the enormous room, now emptying slowly as the delegates headed for committees.
“M. l’Ambassadeur de France, s’il vous plait.”

“Always joking, Orrin,” the Indian Ambassador said. “It is a side that has developed in you since your new responsibilities.”

“Since Geneva, I’d say,” Lord Maudulayne remarked. “Nothing like tasting the joys of defiance, eh, old chap?”

“Defiance, nothing,” Secretary Knox said. “We had no choice.”

“Does it ever seem like a dream?” the M’Bulu asked, and for a long moment the Secretary appraised him with a steady glance. Then he tossed off, “A bad one,” tersely, and started to turn away.

“But I wanted to talk to you for a moment,” Terrible Terry said, holding out a restraining hand.

“Very well,” Orrin Knox said, dropping onto a sofa. “I’ll talk. See you later, Hal. Claude, do you want to stay—or is that forbidden, Your Highness?”

“Why,” the M’Bulu said with a charming smile, “nothing would please me more.” He too sat on the sofa and arranged his brilliant robes. “Mr. Secretary, I want to visit your country and be entertained at the White House. I think it would enhance my cause.”

“Well!” Orrin Knox said. “There’s nothing bashful about that. I should think it would, indeed.”

“And diminish ours,” Lord Maudulayne said, too surprised and annoyed to be polite about it.

“Possibly,” Terrible Terry agreed placidly. “But I think it would be nice.”

“Is this a formal request?” the Secretary inquired in a thoughtful tone that showed he was giving it serious consideration.

“It is,” the M’Bulu said with equal gravity.

“Oh, I say,” Claude Maudulayne said. “Now, really—”

“
You
could always give a reception for me at the Embassy,” Terry said blandly, “prior to the White House dinner.”

“Oh, dinner?” Orrin Knox said. “Is that all you want? Isn’t there anything more we can do for you?”

“I think that will be sufficient,” the M’Bulu said with a jolly laugh.

“What an extraordinary thing,” the Secretary said. “If I were still in the Senate, I’d tell you that it was nonsense and forget it. Now I’m at State, I have to be more diplomatic. Do you mind if I consult with the President? He might have different ideas, you know. It’s just possible he won’t want to rearrange everything for a—a rather minor African prince.”

“Now,” Terry said with a sudden anger in his enormous eyes, “you go too far, Mr. Secretary. Really too far.”

“That was just as though I were still in the Senate,” Orrin Knox said nonchalantly, waving to the Secretary-General, who had paused across the room to talk to two members of the Soviet delegation. “I don’t mean it, really. But
really,
now—”

“You entertain distinguished foreign visitors all the time,” the M’Bulu pointed out in a reasonable tone. “Surely I’m no different.”

“Well, except as you’re still fighting your case in the UN and it would put us in a position of opposing our allies—”

“A position of post-Geneva,” the M’Bulu said softly. “Perhaps it is more necessary now than it might once have been.”

“You’re a very clever young man,” Orrin Knox said without guile. “I wonder what you really want on these shores?”

“I want only the freedom which is due my country,” Terrible Terry said. “I don’t think that’s so extraordinary.”

“I wonder … I wonder. Where do you want to go in the United States?”

“I heard so much about South Carolina when I was at Harvard, but I never got a chance to go down there. I should like to go there now.”

“I am not at all sure you would be welcome in South Carolina,” the Secretary remarked. Terrible Terry smiled.

“I am prepared to chance it.”

“I am afraid we could not permit it,” Orrin Knox said. The gorgeous figure exploded in a happy, sarcastic laugh.

“How can you prevent it? I’m no Communist diplomat you can keep chained to New York or Washington.”

“Possibly the British can restrain you.”

“They wouldn’t dare!” the M’Bulu said scornfully, and Lord Maudulayne sighed.

“Right you are,” he said. “We wouldn’t dare. Nor, my old friend from the Senate, would you.”

“So, you see?” Terrible Terry demanded in happy triumph, “It is all so simple, and we might as well all co-operate.”

“When would you like to go?” Orrin Knox asked.

“The invitation is for tomorrow noon,” the M’Bulu said, and at his listeners’ looks of surprise he laughed again—in innocent merriment, as the Secretary remarked in the privacy of his own mind, in inno-cent merri-ment.

“And what invitation is this?” he asked.

“The Jason Foundation is giving a luncheon for me in Charleston,” Terry said proudly. “Señora Labaiya’s brother, the Governor of California, will introduce me.”

“Patsy Jason Labaiya’s family fortune is behind that,” the Secretary informed Lord Maudulayne. “It does much good and causes some trouble, like all foundations. So Ted Jason will be there too? I thought the California legislature was in special session. Why don’t you go out there instead? Maybe you could address them.”

“I have several invitations to be on television here that I have to keep,” the M’Bulu said proudly. “It all helps.”

“I’m sure it does. Well, I’ll talk to the President. How about letting him designate a member of Congress to go with you as his representative?”

“And my guard?” Terry suggested with a smile. “Who—Senator Cooley? I’m sure that would guarantee me safe-conduct in South Carolina!”

“He might just surprise you and do it,” the Secretary said. “There are a few tricks left in old Seab yet. No, I was thinking of Cullee Hamilton, as a matter of fact. He’s one of our young Representatives, from California. A very fine one. And a Negro.”

“I know him,” the M’Bulu said, and for just a second a contemplative and not too pleasant expression came into his eyes. “He visited my capital of Molobangwe last year for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”

“Did you like him?” the Secretary asked. Terrible Terry’s expression changed to something indefinable. He shrugged.

“He has a pretty wife.” He stood up briskly, his robes showering down about him in glittering cascade. “Very well, I’ll take old Cullee, then, if that’s what you want. And you will talk to the President. Maybe Thursday night, if he’s free. Then I can have the day Thursday for seeing people in Washington.”

“It takes time to arrange a White House dinner,” Orrin Knox said.

“He can do it,” Terry said complacently, and the Secretary thought: Go down through layer after layer after layer and you still find something tenaciously and terribly childlike underneath.

The M’Bulu smiled happily. “That way, I can still be back here in plenty of time for my speech Friday morning.”

“Full of praise for the United States, no doubt,” Orrin Knox suggested. The M’Bulu gave his charming palms-out gesture.

“I am sure of it! Your Excellency—” he shook hands with the British Ambassador. “Mr. Secretary—” he repeated with Orrin Knox. “I just want to say good morning to the S.-G. before I drop in on the First Committee. I shall see you there, no doubt, discussing my important little country.”

“See you there, Your Highness,” Orrin Knox agreed, and caught himself even as the M’Bulu did, “—Terry.”

“Good cheer,” the glamorous visitor said. “Good cheer, both!”

“Mr. Fibay-Toku of Upper Volta, please,” said the young lady at the microphone. “Mr. Fibay-Toku of Upper Volta, please call the Delegates’ Lounge.”

A moment later the Secretary and the Ambassador could see the M’Bulu on the other side of the enormous room, now almost deserted as the hour neared eleven and the UN’s committees prepared to convene. He had hailed the Secretary-General with an easy familiarity, and they were standing near the entrance where the races of mankind passed in and out: both tall, both stately, both handsome, both alert, the one clad in the glittering robes of his homeland, the other in a dark-blue business suit, subtly different, yet subtly alike.

“What an extraordinary young man,” Orrin Knox remarked.

“Trouble,” Claude Maudulayne remarked. “Trouble for us both.”

“Why don’t you give him his little seat in the UN and his God-given right to make boring speeches to the General Assembly and get headlines in the
New York
Times?
That’s all they want, most of these petty little politicians who come out of the bush. It’s the great bauble of the century.”

“We have given a definite promise, at a definite time, under definite conditions,” the British Ambassador said doggedly. “It is only a year away, and even then they will be so poorly prepared it may mean chaos. Her Majesty’s Government will simply not turn loose an undisciplined mob if we can help it, until there is some chance of orderly transition.”

“Here comes Terry, ready or no,” the Secretary said in a mocking tone.

“For you, too,” Lord Maudulayne said. Then he added with a rare show of bitterness, “After all, it
is
post-Geneva. And we all know what that means.”

“Yes,” Orrin Knox conceded, “we all do.”

“Miss Mahdrahani of India, please,” the young lady said. “Miss Mahdrahani of the delegation of India, please call the Delegates’ Lounge.”

2

Now it was autumn, the time of blowing leaves and warm, regretful weather; and yet it did not take any great feat of imagination or effort of will for the Secretary of State to return himself instantly to the terrible tensions of the bright spring days six months ago when he and his colleagues from the Senate had taken off for Geneva from Washington’s National Airport. As he matched the loping stride of Lord Maudulayne along the low, swooping corridors past the constantly recurring glassy vistas of the United Nations building to Conference Room 4 and the inevitable wrangle that awaited them there in First Committee, he could remember very well each detail of that strange, unlikely episode. It had brought a new emphasis to the world, produced a major and not yet clearly understood shift in the East-West confrontation, given to the United States at once new stature and a new need for friends. Partly it had been the President’s doing, partly his. Neither they nor anyone else was quite sure, even now, exactly what had been wrought in those two fantastic, terror-haunted days when it seemed that it would take but a breath—a whisper—and catastrophe beyond imagining would be visited at once upon the human race.

Well: it hadn’t been, and for that, Orrin Knox thought grimly, the good Lord Himself was probably responsible, since His children were so unclear about how it happened. The good Lord and the instincts of nearly two centuries of freedom, which had stood them in good stead when the final chips, or what seemed to be the final chips, were down.

There had been little conversation in the plane, he recalled, as it had hissed out across the empty wastes of the Atlantic. The President, much heartened by the enormous crowd that had come out to see them off with such loving fervor at the airport, had soon dropped off to sleep—“One time when it can really be called the sleep of the just,” the Senate Majority Leader, Bob Munson of Michigan, had remarked to Orrin with an affectionate glance at the dozing Chief Executive—and the rest had occupied themselves with magazines, or brief, murmured conversations, or their own occasional naps. Senator Tom August of Minnesota, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had looked about nervously for a while, staring with deep intensity at the water until Senator Warren Strickland, the Senate Minority Leader, had finally asked, “Well, Tom, and what are the wild waves saying?” At this inquiry, which seemed to disrupt some obscure train of thought that probably only he could follow, the senior Senator from Minnesota had peered up in his startled, owl-like way, mumbled something unintelligible, and finally buried his nose in an old copy of
Life.
(ROBERT A. LEFFINGWELL, the caption on the cover portrait said; WILL THE SENATE SAY YES? The recent nominee for Secretary of State, photographed at a moment before he knew that the Senate would say NO, looked out upon the world with a confident and self-satisfied air.) Shortly before the chief petty officers came in to start arranging things for lunch, Bob Munson had come over and sat down beside Orrin Knox, and for a time their conversation, first cautiously and then with increasing candor and trust, had ranged over events that neither of them in the rush of recent days had found time to discuss with one another: the long, bitter Senate battle over the Leffingwell nomination; the devious yet ultimately goodhearted machinations of Senator Seab Cooley of South Carolina; the contest between Orrin, then senior Senator from Illinois, and the late President; the President’s death; the sudden yet curiously reassuring ascension of Vice President Harley M. Hudson of Michigan to the Presidential chair; and the dark tragedy, which had cost them so much in pain and sorrow and yet curiously given them much, too, in renewed strength and dedication, of Brigham Anderson of Utah, beginning to recede already into an endurable memory, the dark things forgotten and the kindly, decent, generous, and straightforward personality beginning to come into its own as they wanted to remember it and as he would have wanted them to remember it.